Chapter 7: HORTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS

That 'something' is, and must be in present circumstances, horticulture. I do not mean horticulture in the sense of a whole area, large or small, devoted to the growing of fruit and vegetables. I mean small scale husbandry with a horticultural bias - a few acres of fruit and vegetables on a holding of ten, twenty or thirty acres which is otherwise devoted to "mixed farming". From a horticultural point of view a farm of twenty acres is enormous and even a farm of ten acres, given certain marketing and processing conditions, is very far from being "uneconomic".

Realising this I acquired a ten acre holding (of which six acres were arable) in the midlands in 1953, and with my limited scientific knowledge proceeded to grow strawberries, raspberries and black- currants. I made the inevitable mistakes and if I was to start all over again would perhaps make a better and quicker job of it. But I did keep records and get results, and these are not without interest. However the general conclusion I have come to is that however necessary scientific knowledge may be in the cultivating of a city garden or an old walled garden in the country, if you start with virgin soil and have plenty of farmyard manure and straw or peat-mould, you can do with a minimum of scientific knowledge, and your bill for pesticides and artificial manures win be negligible.

In 1927 I saw a boat being loaded at Plougastel Daoulas on the west coast of Brittany with strawberries grown in the immediate neighbourhood and destined for transport to Southampton. The land there did not look any more fertile than the land near Clifden, Roundstone or Renvyle in Connemara.

On 50,000 acres one should, at present prices, be able to raise about £15,000,000 worth of soft fruit. I dare say the price would drop a bit, but the demand for these things is highly elastic. The real problem is the problem of marketing and processing. Let's get on with it.

Since the above was written the Irish Sugar Company has "got on with it". It appears that the total market for horticultural produce, processed and fresh, in the U.K. is worth £1,000 million per annum and the Irish producer might reasonably hope to capture £50 million worth of it now that the most modern processing technique is being adopted. If 100,000 acres or more come to be devoted to horticulture, the produce of which is worth more than £200 per acre, there would be a sevenfold increase in useful employment per acre concerned and the future of our whole economy would be assured.

A recent issue of the Times Review of Industry contains an interesting series of articles on "150 years of canning". Having visited Johnstown Castle, the Dungarvan Fruit Growers Association storage plant, and the new Mallow accelerated freeze drying plant (still at the skeleton stage in 1960) it seems appropriate that I should attempt to put our present activities and plans in some sort of international perspective.

The canning of fruit and vegetables by what may come to be regarded as traditional or conventional methods is already very big business. The new technique which is being pioneered at Mallow by the commendable enterprise of the Sugar Company may revolutionise traditional methods and give our country growing share in a growing international market.

Great Britain is a major outlet for most of the canned food exported from Commonwealth countries, and Great Britain herself is an important contributor to the total available supply. It was as lately as 1924 that present methods of canning fresh garden produce began to be developed by the Agricultural Faculty of the University of Bristol. Not only its initiation, but every step of its remarkable subsequent progress, has been characterised by a close association between scientific research and industrial "know how". By 1959 this new industry was turning out 180 million cans of fruit and 1,500 million cans of vegetables. In terms of weight that represents about 65,000 tons of fruit and 130,000 tons of vegetables from British farms and orchards. Plums account for 15,000 tons, apples for 20,000 tons and strawberries for 8,000 tons in a normal season. "These tonnages represent from 10 to 30 per cent. of the crops grown."

The acreage of land involved is not so easily estimated, but if we assume an average yield of four tons to the acre it would appear that the produce of some 50,000 acres is canned and the total area under fruit and vegetables in the U.K. would appear to be about five times as much or 250,000. Total employment given is not easily estimated either, but we know that these are labour intensive crops, and many tens of thousands of persons must obtain their livelihood from producing them.

In nearly every Commonwealth country the canning of food (meat as well as fruit and vegetables) has become a vitally important secondary industry, and as only three Commonwealth countries have a local market of serious importance there is a "heavy dependence on the United Kingdom market". In 1959 the Commonwealth produced 1,500,000 tons of canned food. Furthermore annual production in Western Europe has doubled since 1938 and in 1956 amounted to 3,300,000 tons. These are staggering figures. Fortunately modern conditions of life in growing urban communities are such that the demand is increasing even more rapidly than the supply and we are not too late in jumping on the band wagon.

Science has been active in providing upwards of 50 insecticides, fungicides, and weedkillers. Some of them however are apt to taint the product so one has to be a bit careful. "It is of interest to note that the risk of tainting (with benzine hexachloride) is less in organic soil than in mineral soils." Perhaps the "organic" farmers have got something there. I grew soft fruit very successfully myself for six years and used no spray at all on it but, on the advice of a neighbouring farmer who was a keen horticulturist, used plenty of farmyard manure and had no trouble with any of these pests.

I am not fanatical about "organic farming" and I do not disdain artificial manures; I recognise the important contribution that scientific research has made, and will continue to make, to modern agriculture and horticulture. But I sometimes wish the scientists would discover a "cure for which there is no disease!" Perhaps an intensive study of the part played by good cultivation and farmyard manure would supply part of the answer.

The canning of fruit and vegetables is done by the Irish Sugar Company in their new pilot plant at Carlow. The Dungarvan Fruit Growers Association handled 10,250 tons of apples per annum on the average over the last 10 years. Of these some 2,000 are dessert quality, and 4,000 are canned and sold to the confectioners. Apples that for various reasons are unlikely to keep well in storage will can quite well. The prices paid to members vary from £25 per ton for cookers to £40 per ton for first grade dessert apples. A yield of four tons to the acre is considered normal. A gross return of from £100 to £150 per acre will pay all expenses (estimated at £47 per acre) and leave the farmer with a comfortable profit. But the economic position of the Association will be on a much more secure basis when the Department's scheme for the planting of an additional 500 acres of well managed orchards in the neighbourhood has come to full fruition.

Our exports of apples are negligible and our imports (mostly dessert apples) average about 3,500 tons per annum. There is room for considerable expansion before the absorptive capacity of even our limited home market is saturated, and even for apples there are export possibilities. But perhaps our chief hope in that connection is in the processing of soft fruit and vegetables by the new Mallow technique. The domestic market for processed peas is already fully supplied and the Sugar Company clearly recognises that it must invade export markets with vigour and success if it is to find an adequate outlet for the products of the new process, and provide our surviving small farmers with an economic incentive to cultivate a substantial acreage of horticultural crops.

Our recent horticultural developments, though encouraging enough, when set in comparison with the achievements of British and Commonwealth producers appear almost microscopic. The Mallow enterprise solves the problem of processing and marketing for anyone within a radius of 30 to 40 miles. When similar processing centres begin to be established at other strategic points in th6 rest of the country then we shall know that our horticultural industry, now in its infancy, has reached the stage of a promising adolescence.

If certain experiments now maturing at Johnstown Castle fulfil their promise blueberries, imported from North America, may become acclimatised and yield a fruit which grows luxuriously on acid peaty soils. This might one day give the small farmers and their families in the West (who have not already emigrated) a lucrative share in the production of a crop, with an export potential, which in North America is worth millions of dollars to its producers.

Dr. Lamb of the Agricultural Institute told me that there are certain areas in North America where derelict farms had been abandoned by owners whose traditional activities had become hopelessly unprofitable. Nature took over and in a few years they covered themselves with a mantle of these profitable berries. At that stage fresh capital and ownership moved in, and now they are doing big and profitable business. A similar revolution in the case of the sour peaty soils of North Mayo and other regions is not beyond the bounds of possibility. In most parts of Ireland the usual soft fruits - strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants -will grow reasonably well. They are an ideal supplement to the normal economy of the small mixed tillage farm where straw is readily available and a plentiful supply of farmyard manure can be assured. They are ideal also in the sense that they are "labour intensive". They make relatively small demands on capital-apart from initial fencing and preliminary dressing with needed artificial manures. But they make heavy demands on labour including child labour.

However, the kind of child labour involved, while highly remunerative, is not the kind that constituted a major part of the horror of the Industrial Revolution in England. A grown man who is getting on in years may conceivably not dislike hoeing among the strawberry beds, but when it comes to picking he had better leave it to his young children or grandchildren --.especially if he is somewhat rheumatic. For them it is a form of "child's play" and has more than a financial reward for in such cases it is neither possible nor desirable to "muzzle the ox".

The growing of soft fruit, while possible nearly anywhere in Ireland, has become an important cash crop in certain limited areas, notably South Wexford in the neighbourhood of Enniscorthy. Hence the establishment of the Agricultural Institute's soft fruit experimental farm at Clonroche between Enniscorthy and New Ross. There are said to be some 700 acres under strawberries in that county. Yields as high as seven tons to the statute acre have been obtained and four tons is quite normal.

Production on the South Wexford scale gives rise to a marketing and also to a processing problem. Wexford strawberries are sold successfully as far away as Tipperary. The dessert qualities return a price to the grower which probably averages over one shilling per pound., but the jam manufacturers are the principal outlet for the qualities below dessert standard. In 1960 there was a somewhat glutted market for these qualities and 6d. a lb. was probably a common price. Even at an average price of 6d. a four ton crop would return over £200 an acre to the grower and very few cash crops will return more.

The "pilot plant" established in Carlow by the Sugar Company promises an additional outlet for the less-than-dessert qualities and should help to put a floor under the average price. When the new plant at Mallow is in production we may expect considerable developments in the processing of high grade fruit (as well as high grade vegetables) which will enable them to command an expanding export market.

Tinned peaches and apricots are a common feature in the housewife's shopping list. How many people know that it is also possible to buy tinned strawberries of native origin? The Dungarvan Fruit Growers Association, besides canning the apples of their members which will not "store", buys strawberries from Wexford growers at 8 pence per pound and I can assure my readers that they taste all right when canned in the traditional manner. When preserved by the new AFD (accelerated freeze drying) process they are said to taste like fresh strawberries.

When the Carlow and Mallow enterprises of the Sugar Company have come to full fruition a situation will exist in which the small farmer, within convenient distance of such centres, can go ahead with a production schedule without fear of running into a glutted market and a disastrous price. As soft fruit growing spreads, other processing centres will doubtless be established at the most convenient geographical centres. What Ireland needs and what we are gradually acquiring is a suitable combination of public, co-operative, and private enterprise. The Sugar Company has been a pioneer in this all important matter.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999